I am a gamer amongst other things. The information about games comes from the internet, magazines and friends.

Friends giving advice and impressions is no new thing. Smart people know their friends and what they like and dislike, hence they can weigh their input and understand whether or not a certain game will appeal to themselves. The Internet provides another form of information, from web-journalists providing a review to the forums or user-reviews. This is not so clear and one must really “work” to read through the lines in order to grasp the fine points of the game objectively (i.e. it doesn’t matter if someone doesn’t like the micromanage in Master of Orion II, what I understand is that there is some form of micromanage and I DO like that).

But magazines offer yet another form of information. Reviews can vary from the clinical statement of facts and features (rarely) to the very personal feel the reviewer had for the game. This is only recently surfacing as a valid form of review, one that I am against.

We can never be truly objective no matter how much we try. Every decision we make is affected by our personal beliefs, views, experiences. For instance, an adventurer that has been playing games ever since the 1980s might find a recent adventure game of medium difficulty, but did he understand that his experience also contributed to that? Was he objective or did his experience allow him to finish a very difficult game with only a minor amount of fuss? And did he in his quest to be objective underestimate how difficult it was for an average gamer only giving it a medium difficulty score?

Most reviewers try to be objective to their credit. They will mention what they didn’t like and explain why, but only as a side note, not something to affect the “score” of the game. And most reviews are done by people that enjoy the genre the game belongs to.

So when I see a review for Need for Speed: Most Wanted in a magazine by a man that doesn’t like the setting (young kids that don’t work for their money with which to upgrade their cars, and other such fine examples), the feel of the car (while saying he longs for a good arcade driving sim he goes on to criticize the “arcadeness” of the title, i.e. the car isn’t damaged) or even the features (police chase? Blah! Fast cars? He got busted by police while revving the engine from stationary position… someone tell him what happens when you apply full throttle on a 400hp car with rear wheel drive). His whole article is one big “I BLAME YOU” and all of it has nothing to do with the game! His objection are socio-economic, the closest he comes to judge the game is when he is referring to what he couldn’t do (crash the car, anti-spin / anti-lock, ABS…) and to comment of the emptiness of streets while you race.

Allow me then to not be objective either. This review was written by a man who has a job involving games and that is all he does. He doesn’t like racers, he doesn’t like the “culture” of street racing, he doesn’t understand car mechanics and hence misses the ball on what NfS:MW has simplified, he doesn’t like games that are not a representation of normal, legal, pragmatic real life.

I don’t like street racing either in that I will never be a part of one. But that is in real life. I LOVE street racing when it comes to games, just as I like doing some PvP (I would never kill someone), doing the bad side of Fable, playing City of Villains. Games are an escapism and to say that “this game is so not real” and judge it for that is so unintelligent that the only remark one can make is “get a life, that is real…”